Off-site backups with restic and a cheap VPS

2026-09-14

restic is my default for backups: encrypted, deduplicated, and it talks to almost any storage. My setup is a nightly systemd timer pushing to an SFTP target.

restic -r sftp:backup@host:/srv/restic backup /etc /var/mail /home \
  --exclude-caches --one-file-system
restic forget --keep-daily 7 --keep-weekly 4 --keep-monthly 6 --prune

Test restores. A backup you never restored is a hope, not a backup.